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Eight Gables is a newly built house in a suburb of the coastal town of Whitstable, Kent. It is a contemporary, low energy, low carbon timber building. The design draws inspiration from surrounding early 20th Century buildings in the Chestfield conservation area, responding to the mimicry of their mock Tudor style with a resonant and modern idiom.
A taxonomical study of mock Tudor houses informed our approach for the new building, influencing its form, materiality, and organisation of its façade. Intended as a reworking of genuine and more modest Tudor buildings, rather than pastiching, the architecture is elemental and legible. A brick plinth establishes a level podium, visible externally and as the internal floor finish. It supports the articulated post and beam timber frame, which is expressed throughout and double-skinned to create a continuous thermal envelope.
The façade is enclosed by glass, red brick and timber panels of differing depths and rhythms. An interlocking hipped roof of Kentish peg tiles forms eight gables, each defining a bay of the main structural grid. It replaces an existing cottage built in the 1930’s but unsympathetically extended in more recent decades. These additions, poorly built and ill-conceived in their design, created a labyrinthine home of disconnected dark rooms and multiple staircases. Our client, having lived in the building for many years, sought to commission a low-energy, modern home for a modest budget. Core to the brief was taking advantage of its setting and establishing a strong relationship with the existing garden and swimming pool.
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Often in simple Tudor farmhouses the internal spaces are organised around a central chimney stack. The circulation in these buildings can often be room to room, like a coiled enfilade. We enjoyed this idea of a journey through connected spaces around a central heart. Eight gables is arranged around a central concrete chimney, the only element of structural masonry in the building, which serves as a centre to the pinwheel plan and supporting the timber frame. The open plan ground floor is organised around the chimney and establishes dual aspect views through the building. A lowered area of floor defines the living area, whilst the dining area sits within a double height space overlooking the garden. A gallery at first floor provides. access to four bedrooms, with glazing framing views of the garden.
The simple honesty of the exterior continues within the house in the sparing palette of natural materials. Timber and fired clay flooring are combined with the exposed timber structure and joinery, with off-white painted infills dividing the rooms. Eight Gables is an environmentally responsible building both in terms of its construction and its lifetime operation. The building is almost entirely timber, including all internal framing and studwork. It is highly insulated and airtight, requiring minimal heating provided by an air source heat pump. An array of photovoltaic panels on the roof provides energy for heating and hot water, with excess energy stored in an on site battery.
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Client: Confidential
Type: Residential
Area: 295sqm
Status: Completed
Location: Whitstable, Kent
